Et In Libertalia Ego
A project by Mathieu Briand
February 19–May 10, 2015
La maison rouge
10 boulevard de la Bastille
75012 Paris
France
Starting in 2008, Mathieu Briand set up his studio on a small island in the Channel of Mozambique (Madagascar). On this island, inhabited for generations by a Malagasy family, Mathieu Briand initiated an artistic project inviting a number of artists to create works in situ or send instructions for him to do so.
The project is called Et In Libertalia Ego, an allusion to the famous inscription Et in Arcadia Ego in Nicolas Poussin’s painting. The idea is to recreate Libertalia, the pirate’s utopia described in A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724), whose origins are an ambiguous mix of fiction and reality. The author’s name, Captain Johnson, may have been a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe.
The exhibition traces the different levels of the project, in a both poetic and documentary manner. At the core of Briand’s ambition are important questions about the essence of art, the relationship between sacred and profane, between art and magic on the micro-cosmos of the island. What kind of new constraints does this unfamiliar non-studio environment imply for art practice?
An artist book completes the project.
Artists invited by Mathieu Briand:
Francis Alÿs, Les Frères Chapuisat, Sophie Dejode & Bertrand Lacombe, Jacin Giordano, Thomas Hirschhorn, Koo Jeong-A, Pierre Huyghe, Gabriel Kuri, Prue Lang, Richard Siegal, Juan Pablo Macias, Mike Nelson, Damián Ortega, Rudy Riccioti, Yvan Salomone
Since 2012, la maison rouge has supported Mathieu Briand’s initiative and presents it in an exhibition running from February 19 to May 10. The show will then travel to Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in September.
